Burlingtonians are used to a steady drumbeat of quality-of-life accolades about their hometown. But they might be surprised to learn that the Queen City has also earned a string of national plaudits for innovation and entrepreneurship.

Two key elements of the national notice?

The leadership provided by Mayor Miro Weinberger combined with the resources offered by the city’s partner on the hill – the University of Vermont.

Three years ago, Burlington was one of only a handful of cities invited to join a National Science Foundation-sponsored consortium, funded by America’s leading technology companies, called U.S. Ignite.

Burlington caught the attention of the Ignite program, which promotes the development of cutting edge Internet applications, because of the city’s high performance fiber optic network, installed by Burlington Telecom, a prerequisite for building next gen apps.

But key to BTV Ignite’s success, says the group’s executive director, Michael Schirling, is the equally fast, statewide fiber optic network built over the last seven years by UVM, which connects innovators in Burlington with collaborators in the rest of the state. The interconnectivity of these two networks means Burlington has leapfrogged other Ignite cities just beginning to build these “digital town squares,” in U.S. Ignite’s lexicon, and “is poised to create the next generation of applications and technology that leverage this infrastructure in a way that very few cities in the United States can do,” Schirling says.

Just this spring Burlington became one of only 34 cities invited to join another prestigious municipal club, MetroLab Networks, a White House initiative designed to pair cities grappling with the challenges of 21st century governance with universities like UVM whose faculty researchers can help create innovative solutions to those challenges.

The White House chose carefully. The innovations that city-university partners develop are meant not only to solve local problems, but also to be of sufficient quality that they can be scaled to the other cities in the MetroLab network – and eventually to any municipality in the country.

Planning has begun, and the city and the university expect to launch the first MetroLab joint projects later in 2016.

And last year, Burlington was named one of only three cities in the country, along with Nashville and Albuquerque, to receive up to $500,000 in grants from the Kansas City-based Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, a private, nonpartisan foundation that aims to foster economic independence by advancing educational achievement and entrepreneurial success. The engagement with Burlington falls under one of Kauffman’s strategic objectives: “to develop tools and metrics for increasing entrepreneurial success at the ecosystem level across communities, cities and regions,” in the foundation’s words.

Kauffman selected Burlington through a competitive process because of the city’s potential for significant entrepreneurial expansion. Burlington was also chosen, the foundation says, because of the presence and role of its higher education institutions, including UVM, as talent pipelines, innovation hubs and research partners. An initiative that will measure and map entrepreneurial activity in greater Burlington is already underway, and Kauffman is in conversation with UVM about potentially funding other research projects that will help highlight Burlington’s existing entrepreneurial success and spotlight opportunities where growth could be facilitated.

Receiving any one of these three tributes would be a rare honor. Earning all three is rarer still; Burlington, in fact, is the only city in country with that distinction.

There’s no doubt that Burlington’s quality of life is world class. But, thanks to a growing interdependence between the city and its resident research university, the quality of its job-creating innovation and entrepreneurship activities are also becoming a signature of our thriving community.

Richard Galbraith is vice president for research at University of Vermont.